IT Director Neil Lathwood has been promoted to the new role of Chief Technology Officer by UKFast.
The appointment comes as the firm seeks to accelerate its DevOps approach and deliver greater automation within its products and processes.
Lathwood, UKFast’s longest serving employee, joined the company in 2000 and now oversees technical delivery of all hosting solutions to clients.
Lathwood said: “The title of CTO means different things to different businesses. For us, the key focus of this role is to bridge the gap between the tech teams and R&D. It’s about connecting the day-to-day business of supporting our clients with the delivery of new products and features to help them grow.
“Our current DevOps team has grown massively in recent years and now represents around 20% of our workforce. I can see us adding hundreds more in coming years.
“By putting more resource into delivering products and building more automation into the provisioning, maintenance and monitoring of our solutions we improve our level of service, making things easier for our clients.”
“When I got the initial chance to work with Lawrence and Gail it felt like a great opportunity but I never envisaged that it would become what it is today. Ever since those early days it’s been a constant learning curve and it’s never stopped because we are continuously pushing boundaries and inventing new ideas.”
During Lathwood’s 18 years at UKFast’, the firm’s annual revenue has grown from £100,000 to £47 million.
CEO Lawrence Jones added: “Developing leaders from within guarantees a much smoother transition, which is incredibly important whilst we continue to evolve and grow at speed.
“We interviewed a number of CTOs but were unable to find anyone who came close to Neil’s skill, passion and understanding of our industry. I’m hugely excited to see what he does at the helm of this new arm of the business.”
